Having a small business web site that customers and potential customers can find online is an important tool for local business owners in Britain.  Particularly with the rapid growth of Internet users searching for local products and services from their mobile phones, a small business web site that potential customers can access on line from their mobile phone or hand held device is fast becoming a business critical issue for local, small business owners.

The rapidly expanding mobile Internet is poised to grow even more rapidly once the telecom companies in the U.K. become more open with their customers about the pricing for mobile search, suggests a recent article in the Times.  Research from the Mobile Data Association, an industry funded not-for-profit data collection agency indicates that “while 25 per cent more people are using the internet on their mobiles than they were two years ago, growth would have been a lot greater if operators had been more open with consumers” about pricing.

“We are calling for greater price transparency on the costs associated with using the mobile internet,” says Mobile Data Association chairman, Steve Reynolds. “The findings of this report suggest a real consumer appetite, but confusion and fear over costs may be holding back growth.”  According to the Mobile Data Association latest survey, “there were signs that mobile internet access would challenge or even supersede that from a traditional PC” reports the Times.  In May 2008, 16.4 million users in the U.K. accessed the Internet via their mobiles, a number that the Mobile Data Association feels is restricted by the lack of transparency amongst telecom service providers.

As pressure mounts for greater transparency and the British telecoms move to capture a wider audience,  it can be expected that the number of Britons tapping into the Internet via their mobile rather than their PC will rise dramatically.  Local business owners who want to tap into that growing market are encouraged to visit the Sesimi.co.uk website.  Sesimi designs, builds and hosts small business web sites for local businesses on a unique web hosting domain.  Using the latest search engine optimization techniques, Sesimi.co.uk clients who choose a Sesimi-built and hosted Web page can be assured their small business will be found and ranked online by search engines like Google and Yahoo!  Each local business profile on Sesimi.co.uk’s small business website is capable of being upgraded to permit mobile search from your customers mobile phone.

As mobile search rises in importance for businesses of all size - large and small - it is becoming clear that mobile search is an ‘emerged’, not an ‘emerging’ marketing trend. The New York Times reports that mobile search is not limited to the new class of “smart” mobile devices, such as the new Apple 3G iPhone that was rolled out in the U.K. this month, or the next-generation of RIM Blackberrys. According to industry-leading mobile advertising agency AdMob, less expensive phones like those from Motorola and Samsung are leading the consumer switch from laptop and desktop to mobile search.

“Nearly 36 percent of all mobile ads served up by AdMob were sent to a Motorola phone,” according to the NYT, while “Samsung phones came in second at 14.1 percent.” According to AdMob, says the NYT, “Worldwide, Nokia and Motorola phones are commonly used, with the Razr and Krzr again the most popular devices for viewing mobile ads.”

Mobile ads increased 19.7 percent for the month of June compared to May, according to AdMob’s numbers. “Going forward,” the NYT reports, “mobile usage is expected to grow faster as consumers swap older, simpler phones for fancier, faster models.”

“While it’s great that the iPhone and BlackBerry are the devices of the future,” says AdMob’s vice president of marketing, Jason Spero, “right now the everyman and -woman are using the mobile Web in a big way, even on less sophisticated phones.”

Sesimi.co.uk offers small businesses a one-stop solution to meet their online marketing needs, by building, optimizing and hosting unique small business web pages designed to capture local search engine traffic. Each Sesimi.co.uk web page is fully customizable for mobile search.

The importance of online marketing and Internet advertising to business in Great Britain was underscored by the recent release of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s “Bellwether Report”. The Belwether Report showed that businesses across the UK have been cutting advertising and marketing budgets in response to the recent economic downturn, rising costs and lower than forecast sales. The one bright spot, however, was in spending for online advertising. Of the company’s surveyed for the Belwhether Report, 19% reported that their online marketing budget had increased from the start of 2008, despite declining markets.

“Internet spending will continue to grow as more clients see the importance of this form of communication and the ability to use (the Internet), like PR, in a tactical context,” Belwhether Report author, Chris Williamson, told the Guardian in a recent interview.

That spending on Internet advertising and online marketing continues to grow when overall advertising and marketing budgets are being slashed is a testament to how profound the shift of consumers to the Internet has been for UK businesses. The small and medium-sized business who take advantage of the current economic downturn to increase their online marketing efforts and create an effective online marketing presence are going to be those businesses who best survive the current economic difficulties as well as the businesses best poised to take advantage of returning economic growth. Online marketing has a particularly pronounced “long-tail effect”, so that efforts and expenditures put in now when there is an economic downturn are apt to pay larger dividends in the future when overall marketing budgets rebound.

New research from Internet registry dotMobi, and AKQA Mobile, the mobile division of international creative advertising AKQA, highlights the growing importance of having a local business profile on a web page that can be found by consumers using mobile search technology from the new generation of Internet-capable smart phones and mobile devices.

The following summarizes some of the key findings from dotMobi/AKQA’s survey of U.K. and U.S. consumers

• 50% of respondents were unaware that there are web sites that are accessible by mobile phone.
• 86% of the respondents “said they were interested in knowing which sites are easily accessible on a mobile phone.”
• Approximately 90% of respondents are “interested in learning about the mobile Web, demonstrating a need for brands to make their mobile properties findable via mobile search, marketing and advertising.”

Overall, the dotMobi/AKQA polling indicates “a strong consumer desire for practical mobile content on cell phones. Having a web page is one thing, but having a web page that can be read and used from a mobile device is another. 

Ultimately, your web page needs to be optimized both for regular Internet search and for mobile search if it is it to be used by customers accessing the site from a mobile device.  Nearly fifty percent of the survey respondents who said they had a poor experience the first time they used the mobile Internet reported that a “poor experience” made them “reluctant to access” that site, or the Internet, again from their mobile phone or device, according to dotMobi. 

“The enormous popularity of mobile devices has had a profound effect on the lifestyle of the consumer, unleashing new levels of connectivity and personal mobility,” says Daniel Rosen, AKQA Mobile’s managing director.

The dotMobi/AKQA research indicates that mobile search is becoming a critical issue for small businesses who wish to tap into the emerging pool of consumers searching for local goods and services, as well as for large, international companies marketing large consumer brands.

Sesimi.co.uk builds and hosts web pages with optimized local business profiles that search engines like Google and Yahoo! find our clients when they are searching for local products and services online.  Each web page is configured so that it will easily be found and ranked by search engines when potential customers and clients enter local search queries – whether from their laptops, desktops or, increasingly, their mobile phones – to look for products and services available in their city or municipality.